Reading is a fundamental and essential part of a person's lifelong learning process. Books which can be read to children (or students) for entertainment and educational purposes are well known. In the prior art, books are typically comprised of a plurality of bound pages which contain printed matter and illustrations in a single volume. in teaching reading skills, when a person reads to another person, such as a child, or vice versa, a book is usually held by one person or the other, or shared by both. In this manner, both persons have convenient visual access to text and illustrations.
When an unsighted person reads a Braille book to a child or student, the reader must hold the book in order to touch the Braille print and the child/student does not share equal viewing access to the text. A visually impaired person must also hold a book being read to use a magnifier or document scanner to read the book. In either instance, the child/student is deprived of the opportunity to hold the book and view the printed matter and illustrations. Thus, the educational impact of the reading experience is adversely affected and the relational aspect of a parent/teacher and child/student shared experience is disrupted.
The use of manipulatives, such as a hands-on bood held by the child/student in the teaching of reading skills, increases the child's/student's attention span and the interest in the material being read. Further, a beginning reader must be able to view the printed matter in order to read and learn from the experience. Neither of these objectives can be readily achieved in a sighted/unsighted pairing because there are no books available in the prior art adopted to sighted/unsighted sharing.
In the prior art, C.R. Hoyme'patented book (U.S. Pat. No. 1,405,134) has removable illustrations for the purpose of entertaining the child looking at the book. A.T. Von Trott's U.S. Pat. No. 2,360,916 relates to greeting cards with openings on the front for view of the messages inserted within the pocket contained in the front cover of the card. S.V. Worth's U.S. Pat. No. 2,946,137 demostrates a book with adhesive-backed, cut-out pictures, which the child matches to the text and then adheres to the spaces in the book provided beside the text in the book. C.J. Taylor's U.S. Pat. No. 4,702,700 demostrates an activity book with removable manipulatives which are stored in pockets on each page of the book. The manipulatives, such as small paper apples, have magnetic backings which adhere to a magnetic space on the illustration of the page, such as an apple tree.
Hoyme's invention is for the purpose of entertaining the child, while the Worth and Taylor inventions are directed toward educational purposes. Von Trott's greeting card presents a means of changing the message in the card. While the above inventions of the prior art involve the use of removable items from pockets or insert sleeves, none are related to the purpose of the present invention, which is to aid in the reading of a book to a child (or student) by an unsighted or visually-impaired person for both education and entertainment, while allowing the person to whom the book is being read to have full control of, and access to the book, thus increasing the enjoyment and educational benefits of the reading experience.
Other prior art includes U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,596,407; 4,524,993 and 4,419,837 which relate to variations of book assemblies that have removable or dividable pages or pocketed carriers for other materials.
None of the cited prior art is directed to paired sighted/unsighted reading of a book by partners in a parent/child or teacher/student relationship.